Bury your gays?

Are you guilty of the ‘Bury Your Gays’ trope if gays are not the only ones you bury?

Bury Your Gays, as I understand it, happens when an LGBTQ character is killed off while straight characters live happily ever after, or when he/she is killed in a particularly gruesome or horrific way while others have fairly tame deaths.

I have a story in which one of my gay characters (there are two) is murdered specifically because of his sexuality (potentially problematic?). However, the same killer also offs several other people for varying reasons, mostly for behaving in ways he considers to be wrong. While I get that people are understandably annoyed when an LGBTQ character is killed off, removing vital representation and making such characters seem somehow ‘expendable’, does the Bury Your Gays trope apply if several other (straight) characters are killed off in the same way? His death is not shown in a gratuitous fashion, in fact it pretty much takes place off page, and is the catalyst for the events that take place later in the story. Am I feeding into this trope by killing him?

I feel that I have not worded this question particularly well, so please feel free to let me know if anything needs clarifying. Thanks.

 

Even if he's killed because he's gay, the fact you've got several other characters being killed for various reasons and other surviving gay characters in the book means it wouldn't come across that way to me.

 

I actually disagree, all due respect. I'm not sure the existence of other victims has much bearing. What you're showing is some extreme homophobic behavior--a hate crime, in fact, at least here in the US.

Now, all the disclaimers: I know that doesn't mean you're homophobic, but you have to see it as part of a larger trend (that's what a trope is, I guess). There are just an awful lot of depictions of bad things happening to LGBT+ characters, and not as many positive stories. That's not your fault, but your work is still existing alongside it whether you like it or not.

And of course you can press on anyway. It's not like there's a law against it. But I just wouldn't be surprised if you catch at least some backlash.

 

If your killer shoots a straying wife, a gay gentleman, a gigolo, dominatrix, a pedophile, and a straight gentleman who prefers prostitutes to nice girls, said killer is obviously after folks who don't conduct themselves in what the killer considers a sexually appropriate manner, and the gay person 's death is part of a pattern that doesn't single him out for special treatment. If the killer draws and quarters the gay gentleman and shoots everyone else, then it's a little weirder.

 

Yeah, no. Being gay shouldn't give your characters plot armor. They should be just as prone to die as anyone else, given similar circumstances. It's one thing not to kill characters just because they are gay, any more than you should fridge female characters just because they are female, it's quite something else to only keep your gay or female characters around because you're terrified of the social consequences.

People need to grow a spine.

If the OP's story requires a gay character to die for some plot point, then kill that character. Everything has to serve the story. The kind of abject terror that we see from far too many writers today who are terrified to offend anyone, even people who likely aren't even potential customers, is absurd. Tell the story that you want to tell. Anyone who tries to censor your work and tell you you're not allowed to tell the story that you want to tell? Fuck 'em. Absolutely fuck 'em.

 

I totally understand. Homophobia is a hate crime here in the UK too and is abhorrent in every way. That being said, gay people still face massive prejudice every day, there is no escaping it and unfortunately I don’t think there will be until people get their heads out of their arses and agree that the way others live their lives is none of their business. Given that this part of my story is set in a rural English village in the 1970s, I would imagine that that prejudice was even more prevalent. To have my killer target people who he believes are morally sinful but ignore the gay guy would not, I think, be all that realistic.

To clarify, this is a horror story. A lot of unpleasant things happen to a lot of people. No one is really having a nice time. As much as I don’t want to feed into a potentially harmful trope, at the same time there is no point in having these characters sail through unscathed while everything goes to hell around them.

 

I would also say that you're not guilty of the trope. You're not killing the gay character simply to have shock value from killing a gay character, and like others have said, as long as you don't make their death even more gruesome than the others and it serves to further the plot in a meaningful way then I would go for it.

That said I'm a middle aged straight guy from middle America, so feel free to take my opinion with a grain of salt.

 

This was my reasoning. As much as violence against LGBTQ people, ethnic minorities and women seem to be prevalent in books and film, I don’t think it would be all that realistic to switch to stories where bad things only happen to straight white men.

 

You're asking yourself the wrong question.

The question you should be asking yourself is: "Am I writing a good story?"

 

His death is implied rather than described in detail, unlike most of the others. It is also what spurs his partner into action, leading to events that take place decades later.

This was my attempt at replying to an earlier comment. It didn’t post as I wanted it to. I am no good with technology.

 

what's the alternative, gay people can only be murdered in stories for reasons other than their gayness? Or they can't be murdered at all? Those are both artificial and ridiculous restrictions. There are stories where people are murdered for their race, religion, and literally any other personal characteristic you could name. What's the difference? There isn't one, except possibly that homosexuals enjoy a hallowed political status these days and you're afraid of people taking offense.

so you don't believe fiction should deal with certain types of crimes?

 

The best way to avoid bury your gays is to have multiple gay (or perhaps otherwise LGBT) characters and have at least one of them not die. One of the biggest pitfalls of gay representation is not just the ways the story can reinforce the feeling that gay people must suffer, but lacking any real depiction of gay people actually being happy and living full lives.

This way you also get the bonus of having multiple LGBT characters to help show the diversity and range of LGBT people, help avoid problems with stereotyping, and generally create a more diverse and interesting cast. It shouldn't be hard with any story with several major characters to fit in a few LGBT ones somewhere.

 

No, the question you should be asking yourself is "Am I contributing to homophobic tropes and trends whether I mean to or not?"
Questions about representation and sensitivity are valid, important concerns in writing. And ultimately they contribute to that question of whether you are writing a good story, but they should be given space to consider the specific questions therein just as it's worth breaking down other specific writing issues.

 

That depends on what you mean by homophobia. I just looked it up and found this:

1. dislike of or prejudice against gay people.

Well obviously disliking somebody for any reason can't be a crime! If you do something to them because you dislike or hate them, then that certainly is a crime. But thoughts can't be policed (not in any decent world). A crime must be actual physical action directed against a person or their property, not thoughts or feelings. How can anybody prove the thoughts and feelings in their own head, much less somebody else's? Once you go down that slippery slope of thought policing you're on the threshold of tyranny—in fact you've crossed it. You need to be able to produce proof in court, you can't go on how people say they feel. That way lies the Salem witch trials and their ilk.

As for prejudice, technically it just means 'to prejudge'. That also falls under the umbrella of thoughts and feelings. Now if you deprive a person of something they have a right to because you dislike them, then that would be morally wrong and should be legally wrong. Or if you damage their person or property (or family etc), that also should be a crime. But once again, a crime cannot be entirely inside a person's head or heart. Those can't be proven or policed in anything resembling a free country.

 

But the former is exactly what we're talking about? Killing off a character only because they're gay. Unless I misread the question.

Anyway I haven't read @The inquisitive writer 's story. Maybe it's fine. People always use tropes, there's no avoiding it. I do think they're right to at least be sensitive to it.

 

I have no interest in taking orders from you or anyone else.

 

Apologies, it’s gone midnight here and I’m not at my most coherent at this time of night.

I should clarify; homophobia when acted on is a hate crime—violence, threats, destruction of property etc, if proven that the perpetrator acted solely or partially due to their attitudes towards their victim’s sexuality. Of course we cannot police what goes on inside people’s heads, nor should we try to. People have the right to think whatever they want of others, but if those thoughts are negative then they are best off keeping their opinions to themselves.

 

I once wrote a story where the first character to die (very gruesomely, in torture in fact) was a black man. I don't hate black people or men. And in fact the reason for his death was that he then became a martyr, the basis of a cult, and a Christlike figure who resurrected when sorely needed to help win a battle against monstrous giant spiders and an army of spider/human hybrids (ordinary people who had been gruesomely melded with spiders against their will). I wouldn't know how to break that down—did I perpetuate any bad tropes? I was accused of 'killing off the black man first' (by the person the character was based on, a friend of mine on the site), but he said it jokingly.

 

Ok, completely agreed then. Sorry I grabbed your statement, I didn't mean to pick on you, just wanted to state those ideas and your post gave me the opportunity.

Also agreed.

 

It seems to me if the killing kicks off the story, which is about the killer being brought to justice for the crimes, then there shouldn't be a problem, right? I mean, whether or not the killer killed other (non-gay) characters.

The act and the person who committed the act are shown to be wrong and in fact despicable. On the other hand if someone killed gays because he hates gays and it isn't shown to be a bad thing, then that's a whole different level of despicable.

The difference is whether it's a character's beliefs or the author's beliefs. Having a despicable character in a story isn't wrong, nor are terrible actions that character commits, as long as the person and actions are demonstrated to be wrong and punishment/justice is served in the end.

 

I've given my opinion and my reasons for believing it. That's generally how a discussion is meant to go. I've made my case, you can take it or leave it.

 

That is the only question that matters.

 

I don't think punishment/justice in the end is actually necessary. It's definitely a good default, but sometimes you want stories with bad endings.
I would add though that there is also a question of gratuitousness with any kind of troubling content like this. Villians doing horrible prejudicial things because it adds to the story being told is one thing, but they shouldn't do something like that just as a more random villainous act, showing us how villainous they are and such or how dark and gritty your world is. Or at least, you can modulate how much we see and hear about it, it may well be best to avoid having graphic scenes witnessing the whole ordeal unless it is really important to the story for the audience to experience that.